The fundamental principle of IRCAM is to encourage productive interaction among scientific research, technological developments, and contemporary music production. Since its establishment in 1977, this initiative has provided the foundation for the institute’s activities. One of the major issues is the importance of contributing to the renewal of musical expression through science and technology. Conversely, ...

IRCAM is an internationally recognized research center dedicated to creating new technologies for music. The institute offers a unique experimental environment where composers strive to enlarge their musical experience through the concepts expressed in new technologies.

In parallel to its fundamental missions of research and creation, IRCAM is committed to sharing its knowledge and know-how, its technologies with the general public. Cutting-edge research and diffusion of innovations, an international reference for education and the democratization of artistic practices are the driving forces behind the institute’s educational activities.

At the center of societal and economic concerns combining culture and information technologies, the current research at IRCAM is seen by the international research community as a reference for interdisciplinary projects on the sciences and technologies for sound and music, constantly exposed to society’s new needs and uses.

The fundamental principle of IRCAM is to encourage productive interaction among scientific research, technological developments, and contemporary music production. Since its establishment in 1977, this initiative has provided the foundation for the institute’s activities. One of the major issues is the importance of contributing to the renewal of musical expression through science and technology. Conversely, ...

IRCAM is an internationally recognized research center dedicated to creating new technologies for music. The institute offers a unique experimental environment where composers strive to enlarge their musical experience through the concepts expressed in new technologies.

In parallel to its fundamental missions of research and creation, IRCAM is committed to sharing its knowledge and know-how, its technologies with the general public. Cutting-edge research and diffusion of innovations, an international reference for education and the democratization of artistic practices are the driving forces behind the institute’s educational activities.

At the center of societal and economic concerns combining culture and information technologies, the current research at IRCAM is seen by the international research community as a reference for interdisciplinary projects on the sciences and technologies for sound and music, constantly exposed to society’s new needs and uses.

Music & Hacking

In general, hacking can characterize a group of activities that is intended to optimize the performances of an object or technological system—the search for the best solution to a given problem—to be transgressive (circumvention of legal or technological standards, misuse of common practices, disrespectful attitude towards objects), and hedonic (pleasure in finding a solution, ingenious manipulation, technical prowess, customization). Hacking therefore designates certain positions or attitudes underpinned by a number of values than it does a precise activity.

In view of this, we can consider hacking to be a series of practices and customs configured by the conceptual categories of computer-science: the computer is an “open”, modular, object adaptable to the changing needs of the user. Code is a support for information, and the network a structure for communication – practices and customs that can then be reused (and remodeled) beyond the computer-science context.

The Music and Hacking project aims to find points of intersection between the hacker culture and today’s music, from the most explicit manifestations (periodical organization of music hack days and other hackathons, massive pirating of music industry productions, etc.) to implicit transfers (surfacing of new conceptions of the musical instrument, questioning the function-author, ethical dimension of certain experimental music, etc.), shedding light on new musical practices.

During 2016-2017, the team analyzed the activities of instrumental hacking in the “Lutheries Urbaines” workshop in Bagnolet, completed by the production of a set of interviews with important players in the improvised music scene who came to create their own performance system.

In 2017, the project will close with the conference “Music and Hacking: Instruments, Communities, Ethics” organized by the musée du quai Branly and IRCAM. This conference will address the multiple forms of misappropriation or misuse employed by musicians on their hardware, creation, and federation of musical communities via hacking or through the influence of the “hacker” ethics found in musical practices.

Finally, the organization of a music hack day after the conference (November 10 & 11 at IRCAM) will give a concrete look at the vibrancy and wealth of different approaches that make up the world of musical hacking.